501 Baseball Books Fans Must Read before They Die

February 15, 2013

Sportswriter and blogger Kaplan's first book is a fun and useful guide for finding arguably the best baseball books among the mounds of titles relating to this book-inspiring sport. Kaplan does not pretend to be anything but a longtime fan, knowledgeable and opinionated about both classic and obscure baseball books published since 1882. He divides his selections into 15 sensible categories, including genres, e.g., fiction, history, autobiography/biography/memoir, and reference, and thematic-topical categories such as umpires and rules, minor leagues, and youth literature. Each title selected includes a full bibliographic citation of its initial publication, mentions of later editions, a brief synopsis and evaluation, and a list of other categories in which the work would fit. VERDICT Only the best-read baseball fans will fail to find something new here; the author's well-informed and well-written comments are compelling enough to make this either a worthwhile light read or a handy reference for all readers of baseball literature.--DK

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